Driving Home

My Pop Culture Guru and her Assistant

I’ve been taking some heat from certain quarters (Cantankerous Friend and Pittsburgh Roommate) on my questioning of Maine’s place in the food chain. I wrote about the conundrum of spending hours in non-moving traffic to reach the Pine Tree State (anyone who’s driven I-95 through Maine knows how apt that name is) this past weekend. Cantankerous, as he is wont to do, completely missed what I was commenting on. It wasn’t Maine – it was the traffic and why anybody would subject themselves to that willingly, even for a stay in Maine. It was humorous to see Pittsburgh grudgingly agreeing with Cantankerous, a first in its own right.

Long Sands

To be clear, and apparently some people need things spelled out, I love Maine. I count the two weeks each summer I spent at York Beach (usually with the Cankerous One) during my youth as some of the best times ever. I loved walking over to Short Sands for the taffy and the Wild Kingdom. Maine is gorgeous. I successfully proposed marriage there once (to clarify at least the proposal was a success). I still love going to visit the Maine Musquetera and Portland has a superb pub crawling environment, say no more! But that drive on a holiday weekend, no thanks.

Speaking of driving my wife and I took in Baby Driver on date night. I rely supremely on my children for pop culture trends and there was a reasonable amount of buzz about this movie which was relatively redeemed but I still felt a little let down. I was expecting something truly special. The film is very, very good with star turning roles for Ansel Elgort and Lily James. They play a young couple just discovering each other while he tries to extricate himself from life as a getaway driver. The criminals are a strength as both Jamie Foxx and John Hamm ooze menace while Kevin Spacey is up to his old tricks of stealing scenes. Music plays an important role throughout and maybe that’s where I fail because I have zero musical ability. I’ll probably see this again because I know I missed something that apparently everybody else sees in this. It’s a cute story with some incredible driving but we’ve all seen that before. The last half of the movie truly rocks as Baby tries to balance both of his worlds and fails spectacularly. I know I’m all over the place here and while I really liked the movie I didn’t love it which is what I expected.

I also finished a book over the weekend. Ripple Effect, was the next in the Jack Noble series by L.T. Ryan. Since he’d squeezed just about everything out of Jack’s pell-mell march through a life as an assassin and overt operative Ryan now tells stories about Jack’s past. This was a smart turn as Ryan excels at the intricate plots and double crosses Jack has to deal with. In this one he’s sent to Central America to deal with a wayward US senator in bed with the drug cartels and is soon cavorting with the CIA as well as rescuing a kidnapped child. There’s the inevitable beautiful operative he has to fall for and he luckily has his man mountain of a friend, Bear, along. Ryan interestingly switches voices throughout the book between Bear and the operative with Jack still as the main character. I truly enjoyed the read which featured the usual number of bodies strewn about with Jack bruised and battered but triumphant.

And of course the daily dose of New Jersey perfection: